Alias
by Rachelea
Summary: One of Sherlock's darker spells calls for an unusual intervention. Mycroft steps in. And somehow John finds himself chasing a mass-murderer around the madhouse called Hogwarts-a task which involves dodging duels, dementors, and, for some bizarre reason, a giant squid. All while trying to untangle the dark past of Sherlock Holmes. Or...whatever he's called now.
1. Chapter 1

There was a large wad of blue silk on the sofa. Though he peered closer as he entered the living room, it took John several moments to realize that the wad contained his flatmate.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. No. Bored."

John sighed slightly at this news—hardly unexpected—and settled into his armchair, picking up the paper that had lain untouched on the coffee table since the previous morning. He had barely glanced at the front page when his brow furrowed.

"Hang on—Sherlock, have you heard about the Black case?"

A muffled groan into the pillows.

"How could I not, when you insist on turning on that odious drivel-generating contraption—"

"—the telly?"

" _Every_ evening?"

Actually, they had spent three evenings out of the past week chasing serial killers down dark alleyways, but John knew better than to point that out.

"What do you think about the case?" he persisted instead. "Escaped mass-murderer…Seems right up your street, as Mrs. Hudson would say."

Sherlock sighed.

"Lestrade bowed to the inevitable and contacted me last week. The police are at their wits' end, as per usual."

"…and?"

"And for once they have reason to be. There is _nothing_ to go on, John. Nothing but the photograph. There's obviously some sort of political game afoot—the government won't disclose Black's past, his connections, not even the prison he escaped from. His crime is given out as 'murder', yet they don't give victims' names, not even to Scotland Yard. I can't make bricks without clay."

John swallowed his surprise. " _You_ couldn't uncover anything about this?"

"I refuse to do Mycroft's job for him," Sherlock snarled. "He has all the data I need, and I'm not about to waste my time digging it up if he'd rather send out a pathetic and ineffectual plea to the entire country."

John frowned. If this Black bloke was involved in anything classified, why broadcast his disappearance?

"Besides," Sherlock's voice broke grudgingly into his thoughts. "The name wasn't in any of the databases I hacked."

* * *

 **AN: If you enjoy this story, then I recommend my other crossovers, most featuring Sherlock and John:**

 **A Strange Sort of Fate**

 **Speaking of Serpents**

 **The Looking Glass**

 **Deductions and Dementors**

 **Well Worth Chronicling**


	2. Chapter 2

The visitor was as anticipated as the manner of his entrance was not.

Fawkes squawked a greeting as the flames died down, and Albus Dumbledore set down his spectacles to welcome the man spinning to a halt in his fireplace, perfectly poised and leaning on a long black umbrella.

"Mycroft," greeted the headmaster.

"Albus."

"Talisman still working well?"

The younger man nodded, not sparing a glance down at the gold tiepin that projected a tingling, invisible magical field over his body.

"You had Andrea strengthen the field, I see."

"Merely an experiment. My calculations have so far borne out."

"We are fortunate to have the occasional use of your prodigious gifts, Mr. Holmes. Sometimes it seems to me that I must have misplaced some memories, and you have been here all along, befuddling your professors and leading your House to glory."

Mycroft's gaze wandered briefly to the top shelf where a battered and much-repaired hat seemed to stare down at him. But wondering was a childish indulgence, and he dropped his eyes quickly to forestall the knowing gleam in the headmaster's.

"Memories are easily misplaced, don't you think?"

"Quite." Albus replaced his spectacles and waited. When the other showed no inclination to elaborate, he continued.

"At any rate, I would enjoy the looks on some of my colleagues' faces if they knew that many of the greatest modern advances in Arithmancy were made by a 'Muggle'. I confess I am coming to dislike the term, it seems such an inadequate representation of your sector of humankind."

"Denotatively, I find it harmless. The connotation that such a word acquires is merely the reflection of deeper problems."

"I have spent much of my life attempting to convince my colleagues of that very thing."

"And on the behalf of the Muggle world, I offer my appreciation. However, there are other words…and connotations…that require our attention now."

"Indeed?"

"How would you define a Death Eater, Albus?"

Dumbledore sat up straight and tipped his head slightly, scrutinizing the other man's face for clues as to where this was leading.

"As one who is a follower of the wizard styling himself Lord Voldemort," he said after a moment's thought.

"Currently?"

"I do not believe a man is forever defined by his past."

Something in Mycroft's expression made Dumbledore peer very hard over his spectacles. "Am I correct in assuming the Death Eater you are concerned with is Sirius Black?"

"Indirectly…yes. I presume that's why you summoned me here.

"I did not expect you for several hours. I thought the Korean elections were today?"

"The greatest threats right now stem from your world."

"True enough," Albus sighed and rubbed his temple. "I wished to inform you of my belief that the Muggle world can rest easy, for now. Remain vigilant, always vigilant, but I do not believe that Black has any immediate plans against Muggle populations. He has set his eyes on another target, one inside this school—and he was sighted here in the early hours of this morning."

Mycroft reeled. This was it, then, the reason for the tension in the air, the defeated slump to the headmaster's shoulders, the eyes lacking their usual twinkle.

"Here, _within_ the school? Are you certain?"

"There can be no doubt of it. He was seen in Gryffindor tower, Mycroft, in the student's dormitories no less, mere feet from a sleeping Harry Potter and four other students." Albus dropped his voice, strained. "We came very close to losing the boy, and I need not tell you how heavily that weighs on my mind."

Mycroft's tone had shed its usual remoteness.

"You mean to tell me the mass murderer is _inside_ a castle full of children?"

" _Was_ inside. We have scoured every stone of the castle. However he got in, Black is gone now. I have taken extraordinary precautionary measures to prevent Black's return, but we can conceive of no way that he could have found his way onto the grounds, let alone inside Hogwarts…and until we learn how he did, there is no foolproof means of preventing his return. My main objective in asking you here was to appraise you of the situation, but if you hear anything, anything at all from your contacts…" Albus' voice dropped. "Mycroft, I cannot overstate the direness of the situation. Unless something changes within a day, I will send the students back to their homes. You are aware of my reputation, but I do not deserve it if I cannot protect my students."

The effect of these words on the other man was profound. Mycroft readjusted his grip on his umbrella, shifting it to his other hand; the closest he ever came to expressing uncertainty. When he spoke, it was hesitantly, letting the words trail into the silence of the office.

"There is something I have long put off discussing with you, Albus. I too have set protections in place over one for whom I bear responsibility. Protections I was loath to breach until the situation became… relevant. It was selfish of me to keep silence so long, and now that the past has broken out of prison to confront us, I can no longer justify my secrecy."

The headmaster raised his head.

"Mycroft, what are you saying?"

"A possible solution to your problem." Mycroft suppressed a sigh. "I have a brother."

Albus thoughtfully refrained from blurting out _"There's another one?!"_ and instead inquired, "Does he share your gifts?"

"Oh yes, his intellect is similar, if less…" he struggled for a word. "…structured. As to his other skills, I should think his teachers would be better informed than I."

"His teachers…" Dumbledore straightened. "Mycroft, are you implying that your _brother_ attended Hogwarts? And that he can somehow help us?"

Mycroft pushed a photograph across the desk.

"Judge for yourself, headmaster."

Very little surprises one after a hundred and fifty years.

Albus Dumbledore was surprised.

He studied the glossy, static photograph, at any moment expecting the occupant to turn its face and lock his gaze. But even in a Muggle photograph there was no mistaking the youthful profile, just as there was no mistaking the hopeful dread that kindled in his heart.

"Explain."

Mycroft Holmes was not a man accustomed to explaining himself. Even if he had been, he would have wondered where to begin. Albus had spoken with laudable calm, but over his shoulder the red-and-gold bird fixed him with a beady-eyed gaze that the younger man felt was quite eloquent enough for them both. Mycroft took a deep breath.

"He's adopted," he offered somewhat feebly.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: apologies for a short chapter and for missing a day. Thanks for the reviews/follows.**

 **There's just...you know** **...no post on Sunday.**

* * *

Behind closed lids, the world flashed by in broken fragments. Emotions were the landscape, the usual useless debris laced with scraps of memory…a thrashing, sickening swirl that surging into a brief deceptive peace. Images. He took a breath, scanning the gloomy, flat tracery of branching, the illegible lettering that blurred before his eyes, threadbare with resentment…a gloomy corridor with dark, heavily draped windows…a quiet snuffling and cold moisture on his palm…and then he was drowning again. Raw fear short through with savage triumph dissolved into terror and nausea, and he spun faster and faster until he felt himself pulled down into churning blackness…

Sherlock awoke with a start.

He was in his own bedroom, empty save for a little-used bed and a desk off to the corner whose tidy state bore all the marks of Mrs. Hudson's recent touch. The ceiling was invisible in the darkness, and somehow the now-wrinkled sheets and rigid mattress on which he lay were unreal, less tangible than the dreams had been. Staring upward, he pressed two shaking fingers against the exposed skin of his neck and took his own racing pulse out of habit.

Sherlock was not prone to nightmares, and when they occurred, generally found them more intriguing than frightening. This one was the exception.

It was not the dream's first or even twentieth recurrence. There was nothing concrete, no trace of it in his conscious thoughts—and yet always it returned; sometimes week after week, while at other times his sleep went untroubled for months. Lately it haunted his mind every time he sank into blackness. There were frustrating glimpses of the childhood Mycroft mentioned—impressions of gloomy, gilded rooms, a neglected manor house, once or twice the snuffling nose and shaggy coat of a large dog—and then those sensations dissolved, shattered, swallowed up in the all-engulfing fear that plagued his nights.

"It's your own fault, little brother," Mycroft had said long ago, emanating that improbable mixture of concern and disappointment and indifference from the doorway—and Sherlock spat back some response, no doubt made unintelligible by the fading narcotic that seeped through his veins and did nothing to calm the frantic workings of his mind.

 _Minor cerebral damage,_ the doctors had said. _Partial amnesia, possibility of impaired cognitive function… relatively few complications, very fortunate…_

Evidently their definition of 'good fortune' differed from Sherlock's. In the days before the dreams came, he would have described the plain white hospital room, with its plain white sheets and dutiful beeping of monitors as more of a _hell on Earth._ Now an even worse abyss welcomed him whenever he shut his eyes.

Complications.

 _Sleep is a waste of time, he had told John Watson many years later,_ _and I prefer to function on as little of it as possible._


	4. Chapter 4

"Sherlock, you all right?"

"Headache," he growled. This response nearly always forestalled further inquiry, and had the added bonus of being true.

John Watson was not a stupid man, however, and it didn't take a three-year flatshare with the world's only consulting detective to learn to deduce whether said idiot detective had actually slept. Which, lately, was not often.

John poured himself a cuppa, wondering if there was any way to say this with more tact than your average citadel siege. It wouldn't be the first time he had been forced to take a battering ram to the doors of Sherlock's mind palace.

"It's the dreams again, isn't it."

Sherlock dropped onto the sofa without a glance at the plate of toast placed pointedly on the coffee table, and did not deign to respond.

John persisted.

"How long has it been now? A month?"

 _More like a lifetime,_ Sherlock said inside his head, and the John in his head reeled back in concerned shock.

"More or less," he muttered aloud.

John took a breath.

This was a bad idea. He had to say it. This was getting ridiculous. No, this was _already_ ridiculous.

 _Here it comes._

"Have you thought of, er," John held his breath. "…talking to someone about that?"

A few unbelieving seconds passed as Sherlock processed the suggestion. And then he raised his head abruptly and flashed John his brightest, least sincere smile. "There are at least fifty-one reasons why that is a bad idea, and you're a fine one to lecture me about nightmares, _doctor_."

On an ordinary day, caustic sarcasm so early in the morning would mean John would leave him alone until the afternoon. On an ordinary day, John would finish his tea and retreat to Sarah's or to the surgery the moment his closet yielded a clean jumper-and-slack combination. On an ordinary day, they would not be having this conversation at all and Sherlock would be left to fight off his dark thoughts and dawning headache in peace.

John slammed down his mug. "What are the reasons?"

"John, you cannot possibly…"

"There are dark circles under your eyes and tension in your shoulders and you've been even moodier than usual, especially since you nearly collapsed on that chase two days ago," John reeled off, not bothering to censor his tone. "You are _exhausted_ , Sherlock. This is affecting you; it's visible; you can't pretend it's not. You didn't kick Mycroft out when he came by yesterday. It's my turn now: I want to hear the reasons."

Sherlock hissed out a resigned sighed and ran his long fingers through his curls.

"Well for one, Mycroft has kindly informed me that what you're suggesting is an infringement of the International Statute of Secrecy. Not sure why he bothered, actually," he added as an afterthought.

"…an infringement of the _what_?"

Clearly, this was not an ordinary day.

Seconds later, Mycroft confirmed this hypothesis by materializing in the fireplace in a vortex of emerald flame. John froze in shock, mug of tea halfway to his lips.

"There." Sherlock accused, waving a lazy arm. "You broke it, not me."

"Sherlock, it's time to go."

"You're not even a wizard and you get to break the International Statute of Secrecy," Sherlock complained. "Where's my wand?"

"Sherlock."

"I want my wand."

Mycroft stepped from the fireplace exactly as though he materialized in their living room every day, brushing stray ash from the shoulders of his suit and giving no indication that his arrival had been in any way unusual.

"I said it's time to _go_ , Sherlock," said the elder Holmes irritably. "This is not one of your games, something trite to avoid in order to annoy me." _Like cousin Hilde's graduation,_ he almost added, but caught himself. How easily lies rolled off the tongue after fifteen years.

Sherlock sat up, pulling his dressing gown more tightly around himself. "No, this is one of _your_ games, _brother_."

"Get some clothes on, we are leaving."

"I miss my wand."

"Oh, for…" Mycroft actually cursed, which would have sent John reeling in surprise if he had not just witnessed the highly improbable sight of the British Government stepping out of the fireplace in a rush of flame. "You haven't even seen it in fifteen years!"

"All the more reason."

"You will receive it _after_ our meeting. If all goes well."

"Isn't it illegal, to keep a wizard from his magic wand?"

Mycroft gritted his teeth. "Technically not, in your case."

Sherlock heaved himself off the sofa, scowl fixed firmly in place. Mycroft, however, read anticipation in his body language; he'd given it two days to build up, after all…

Meanwhile, John remembered how to breathe again. Explosively.

"Hang on," he half-yelled. Despite his shock, or perhaps because of it, he found himself fighting off the headache he always got when trying to keep up with the Holmes brothers' conversations. For some reason it was worse than usual. " _Where_ are you going? And Mycroft…did you just—"

"We're going to talk to someone about my problem," said Sherlock sarcastically, disappearing down the hall.

"Not a sheet this time!" Mycroft called after him.

The elder Holmes turned to John Watson with a sigh.

"He'll be insufferable after this," he complained. "Are you all right?"

"Fine…" John's voice trailed off; he looked rather shell-shocked. Mycroft grimaced.

"He didn't explain anything to you?"

John mutely shook his head.

"I suppose you get used to that, living with him…"

A shrug. "You'd know."

"No," said Mycroft. "Actually, I wouldn't."

There was a lengthy pause while Mycroft struggled, for the second time in as many days, to open an admittedly bizarre conversation. Surprisingly, Dr. Watson solved that problem for him.

"You get used to surprises, living with Sherlock. But…" he waved a bewildered hand in the direction of the fireplace. "That…you…the fire..."

"Ah, yes," said Mycroft carefully. "That. Well, John, to begin with you ought to know that I am a perfectly ordinary—" ignoring John's rather uncouth snort—"human being like yourself…"

Sherlock chose this moment to appear from the bedroom. Fully and impeccably clothed, noted the other two in some surprise.

Mycroft rose and stepped into the fireplace as naturally as though he were showing himself to the door, apparently relieved to postpone the conversation. "Good day, Dr. Watson."

His brother paused with one foot on the hearth. "Don't be ridiculous, Mycroft, of course he's coming."

John eyed the grimy, cramped space and fought down a hysterical laugh.

"Am I?" With heroic restraint.

Then, as an afterthought, "Where?"

Sherlock merely raised an eyebrow at Mycroft, who exhaled slowly, wondering how his life had led up to this.

"We're off to see the wizard."

* * *

 **A/N: That took an unexpected turn.**


	5. Chapter 5

Again the quiet of the headmaster's office was shattered.

The fireplace trembled and green flame shot upward, expelling a man of small stature, an impressive vocabulary, and graying blonde hair, who immediately coughed up a quantity of ash onto the Persian carpet. Dumbledore smiled vaguely in welcome; however, his gaze was fixed on the tall young man who stood elegantly upright next to Mycroft, matching his brother's height and appearing thoroughly unimpressed with the swirling green flames dying down around his feet. However, Dumbledore, watching closely, saw him give a barely perceptible start as he stepped into the main office. Mycroft followed him out of the grate.

The man turned automatically as Dumbledore stood in greeting and accorded him a thorough, searching gaze; the headmaster, though prepared, experienced a jolt of shock as the icy eyes met his.

"Regulus," he exclaimed, collapsing back onto his chair, as dizzy as though he and not the other had just quitted the Floo Network. "It really is you—"

But the man had turned away and was circumventing the office in slow steps, eyes dancing from side to side as he took in every detail. Mycroft held up a hand for silence, and Albus understood—there would be no communicating with Regulus until the man had convinced himself, completely, that Mycroft's explanation was true.

Regulus' companion, however, broke the silence, making a visible effort not to begin cursing again.

"Where are we? Mycroft? How did we get here? What was…that?"

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, by fire via the Floo network," Dumbledore offered, eyes still fixed on the silent young man.

"And we were testing an incredibly advanced and top secret government teleportation device?" John importuned Mycroft, hoping desperately that the answer would be "Yes" and not "Magic".

"No," said Mycroft. "It was magic. One of the few such acts that people like you and I are able to perform. However, Sherlock is another story…"

There was a pause.

"Are you telling me that my best friend is a…"

Another silence while John struggled to come up with a word.

"…magic person?"

"Wizard," corrected Mycroft. Dumbledore concealed a smile.

Sherlock meanwhile finished his examination of the office, running a light hand over the painted surfaces of the portraits, whose occupants drew back in indignation, and giving Fawkes a searching glance. For reasons unknown to Dumbledore, he also applied his intense scrutiny to sections of the carpet and doorframe before turning back around with an immensely satisfied expression.

Regulus faced the headmaster as suddenly as he had before, but this time he seemed really to see him.

"Dumbledore."

"Regulus," said Dumbledore, masking his wariness with calm. "Do you know me?"

"Only from my brother's description. Unless this castle holds another ancient silver-bearded headmaster with," Regulus' gaze swept him again, "a large hand-knitted sock collection, ludicrous taste in hats, and an apparent proclivity for lemon drops."

"That would be I," returned Albus, smiling a little.

The blonde man interrupted.

"I'm sorry, but can someone please explain to me what…" he broke off, evidently for fear that his soldier's vocabulary would resurface.

"I am afraid that my shock at Regulus' reappearance has caused my manners to quite desert me," said Dumbledore with a smile. "Allow me to introduce myself. Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

The small man made a strangled noise in the back of his throat that Dumbledore interpreted as "John Watson."

Casting his gaze around the walls and the high ceiling of the round office, Regulus flung himself into an armchair with practiced grace. "I'm with John," he said. "I think that a full explanation is about a decade and a half overdue. Oh, and John," with an earnest glance at his friend. "There's something I forgot to tell you."

John stared.

"Apparently I'm adopted."


	6. Chapter 6

John took a deep breath. The four of them sat in a cluster of maroon leather armchairs around the flickering flames, which had mercifully reassumed their natural hue and proportions. Raindrops pounded leadenly against the two vaulted, paned windows behind the headmaster's desk. Squinting through them, John could make out the stormy morass looming above a green smudge of forest, as though threatening with destruction all he had ever assumed about the world. He tried not to think too much about the other things visible from the window.

"So let me get this straight," he said, eyes falling shut as he attempted to dredge the conversation's details from the lunatic realm where they belonged, and fit them into the context of reality. "Sherlock didn't actually grow up a Holmes; he's a wizard with a name even weirder than 'Sherlock'—"

Sherlock smiled unexpectedly.

"—who attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which is a secret castle in the north of Britain—"

"Wherein you now sit," put in Dumbledore.

"And he was on the run from the Ministry of Magic, which by the way exists—"

"Not exactly on the _run_ ," said Sherlock dismissively. "I didn't do anything criminal."

"So far as we know." Mycroft was unconvinced.

"So far as _I_ know."

"Ah yes," said John. "You're an amnesiac, too. I'd forgotten that bit." Sherlock snorted.

"Yes, I'm certain Mycroft will be able to enlighten us all as to how that occurred."

Mycroft imparted his least sincere smile and leaned against the desk, tapping his umbrella against a well-polished shoe. "In part."

"Then pray share what you _do_ know," said Albus. "Reg—Sherlock has every right to know."

"First of all," said Mycroft awkwardly, after a pause, "everything I did was for your good, Sherlock. I _do_ consider you my brother."

Sherlock's reply left no one in any doubt as to what he thought of this beginning.

"Get on with it."

"There are reasons—it may not be wise to do so at once. Sherlock, I am concerned about—"

"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR CONCERN!"

Everyone jumped, staring at Sherlock, who was on his feet with serpentine swiftness, ordinarily aloof features twisted in an inhuman snarl. John felt a cold twinge in his stomach. It was true that Sherlock had been on edge as of late, and his moods were often mercurial, but the façade—if façade it was—of irritable detachment rarely slipped during dealings with his brother. Only Mycroft appeared unsurprised by the outburst, though the collapse of his shoulders against leather spoke of sudden and uncharacteristic weariness, of uncertainty in the face of a day long held in dread. He closed his eyes and began again.

"Believe me, Sherlock, I—"

John's soldier's sense began buzzing almost imperceptibly at the base of his skull just before the lights began flickering. His left hand settled stone-still against his side.

"No, believe _me_ ," Sherlock hissed, fixing Mycroft with a gaze that could almost have spitted him to the wall. "If I do not have the full story, and the memories you have stolen from me, within the hour, you may forget our games of _brotherly love_ and consider me your enemy."

The lights flicked off and on again, more violently; the window panes rattled in their frames, the whole room seeming to tremble under a silent pulse of energy. Dumbledore tapped his wand against the desk, his gaze inscrutable as he regarded his old student. Mycroft seemed to turn to stone as Sherlock finished.

"And that, I assure you, you do not want."

Mycroft opened his mouth again but stopped, arrested by the sight of Sherlock's left sleeve, which was smoking slightly. The next moment Sherlock felt a pain as piercing as though a hot iron were branding his skin, and ripped his cuff open. Coming into livid relief on his forearm was the image of a skull, black and grotesque, with a twisting serpent protruding from its mouth.

"That wasn't there before," said John automatically, turning to Dumbledore for an explanation. The headmaster, however, was silent. An expression of intense sadness passed over his face.

Sherlock caught his breath.

"I remember this," he said in a low voice. "Professor," looking up. "What does it mean?"

Dumbledore sighed deeply and turned to Mycroft. "The facts, please, Mr. Holmes, and leave nothing out. I will fill in the rest as far as I know it."

Mycroft began.


	7. Chapter 7

_There is little to tell. I was a young man, fairly new to government work, but not so new as to be ignorant of the magical world. Nor so new as to be considered…dispensable. Even then, the orders I gave were generally followed._

 _When the wild-looking young man appeared out of nowhere on the CCTV, my department was immediately informed. Within minutes I was on the scene. The man's origins would have been clear to my eye even had he not stepped from thin air; he wore long black robes, sopping wet and caked in grime, while a polished wooden stick like a conductor's baton lay forgotten on the ground beside him. Only I recognized it for what it was: an instrument of magic._

 _The man was conversing—or rather pleading—with empty air, so engrossed that he hardly noticed the approach of my agents. At my signal the street was cordoned off, the abandoned wand confiscated. Only then did I approach him myself. He was still ranting into the air, alternately pleading with a "Master" and arguing with someone whom he called "Creature". I was within two feet of him before he seemed to see me. A long arm snaked up to grasp mine, but the grip was not threatening, and I signaled my agents to stand down. Desperate blue-grey eyes stared into my own, fevered and almost unseeing, and a rank stench arose from the water that dripped from his unkempt hair and robes._

 _"Don't," he whispered, pulling me downwards. "Don't let him find me…"_

 _And those were the last words he spoke for a long time, though he clutched my arm like a drowning man. For only a split second his eyes came into focus on my face, and his grip seemed to burn me…Looking down, I saw a jagged tear in the left sleeve, and through it a familiar symbol._

 _After those first desperate words he spoke to no one, apart from the figments that only he could see. He made no move to accept or reject our help, with one exception: he gulped down water like a man dying of thirst, although he was drenched and shivering._

 _I had then in my employ a brilliant young Auror. I dispatched her immediately to fetch the most discreet and gifted of St. Mungo's Healers. They examined the young man at our most secure government facility, well warded against magical intruders. His chief ailment, however, was in his mind, beyond their experience, and one that it seemed only time might mend._

 _Eventually it did so. In part. The young Death Eater gave over his rantings, his obsessive thirst, and seemed to grow more conscious of his surroundings, but still there were long periods during which he sat and stared into nothing. At these times I knew he was reliving whatever it was that had brought him to such a state._

 _This, of course, was a mystery that gnawed at my mind as well. I pieced together the emerging clues; that he had been a follower of Voldemort was clear from his Dark Mark, and yet he gazed at it with such hatred, and in his more lucid moments tried to claw it off, until his entire forearm dripped blood. My agent healed the wounds and covered the Mark with a strong glamour, and that, I believe, is when his mind quieted enough for her to take the little Pensieve we were able to extract from him._

 _There was no means in those days by which a non-magical person could enter another's memories, and so I was forced to rely on my agent's descriptions, but I have seen them since: an amalgam of nightmares. Tortured screams, too high to be his own—a flat, cruel, snakelike face, whose owner I did not need to guess at—and finally a glimpse of greenish light glinting off water, and then blackness. These were the only clues that Regulus Arcturus Black left me to deduce his past._

 _He had been a Death Eater. He had, it seemed, abandoned that post, and in doing so suffered terribly. More than that, I could not tell. It seemed enough to explain his torment—Lord Voldemort was not known for his mercy—and yet others of the Dark Lord's enemies, particularly deserters, invariably ended up dead. I could not begin to guess how this one had escaped._

 _You may well ask, why did I not turn the man over to the jurisdiction of his own government? The expedience of war may justify brutality, but I did not believe that they could be more successful than I in extracting information from him; both Veritaserum and Legilimency had proved useless. The former because he could not articulate his past, the latter because his mind was closed off more completely than any my agent had ever encountered. More to the point, the war with Voldemort had reached critical mass. The Ministry of Magic was infiltrated and in shambles. And if the Dark Lord still sought his lost sheep, I did not wish to make it easy for him._

 _After his mind heals, I reasoned. If his mind heals._

 _And then the war ended, and turning him over was no longer an option._

 _The end of the war was itself a miracle, though it did not come without sacrifice. In the upper echelons of government we rushed to reassure the public, to explain away the blast in Godric's Hollow, and later, the deaths of twelve of our people…_

 _And I, meanwhile, stared into a moving newsprint photo, at a resemblance too strong for coincidence._

 _Sirius Black was rushed to prison without a trial. He was undeniably guilty. But that neglect was a miscarriage of justice all the same, and I could not suppose that his brother would fare better, with the damning Mark on his arm, the weight of the now-despised family name and no proof of his innocence—if indeed he was innocent. Shut away in Azkaban, mind squandered, secrets undiscovered…I am not a man given to sympathy, but something within me rebelled at the idea. The situations appeared in stark contrast. One man, carefree and affectionate, bearing no Mark, turned murderer in the blink of an eye. The other, steeped in all the signs of Dark Magic, and nearly mute with the torment of his past._

 _Long months passed, and no attack surfaced, no cry rose from the Wizarding World demanding to know what had become of Regulus Black. He was, to all intents and purposes, dead. I was content to leave him that way._

 _And he was dying. As the chill of war dissipated, Regulus' mind cleared and his intellect made itself known. It was nearer to mine than any I had ever encountered, and put me in mind of a dark-haired baby, a tiny grave, and the worn birth certificate that still resided in my mother's bureau. The beginnings of a plan formed. But he was, as ever, as incapable of speaking of the past as he was of shedding it. As the months drew on he closed off again and withdrew into longer and deeper silences, trapped in his private torture, refusing to move or to eat. Finally he was only kept alive through a needle in his arm—and brother, you have every right to hate me for the plan I then put into effect._

 _Obliviate, I told Andrea. Erase him as completely as you can._

 _When Regulus Black next awoke he was Sherlock Holmes, nineteen-year-old recovering cocaine addict, and my parents had two sons again._


	8. Chapter 8

The room was pin-drop quiet as Mycroft concluded. John chanced a glance at Sherlock to see his expression. In the instant before it closed off completely, John caught a fleeting glimpse of something raw and pained and unfamiliar.

"Sherlock…?"

Sherlock only shook his head and stood, abruptly, moving to plant himself in the unoccupied chair nearest the hearth. The flames, which like the room's other occupants had seemed to hold their breath as Mycroft spoke, sprang up again, their natural golden-orange chasing back the shadows. Sherlock appeared not to notice. Placing the tips of his fingers together, he leaned in to the warmth and sat pensive, lost in thought.

"He'll be there for hours," said John, recognizing the symptoms. "Possibly days."

"To what end?" inquired Dumbledore, who had looked very grave as Mycroft's tale drew to a close.

"Recall, if we are fortunate," Mycroft answered. Something about the recounting seemed to have melted his icy exterior; at any rate it occurred to John that Sherlock's brother—or, well, whatever he was—was more human now than he had ever seen him. Perhaps it had something to do with the lines in his face that John had never noticed before. "Memory Charms are imperfect; they do not erase, they merely suppress."

"Hang on," said John slowly. "Are you saying Sherlock will remember…I mean…who he was before?"

"Possibly. Keep in mind that there are other factors at play, not the least of which is whatever induced the memory loss in the first place."

"But then, he'll go back to… _dying_ , you said, Mycroft, from the sound of it he was nearly catatonic!"

"It was fifteen years ago," said Mycroft heavily. "And I tried to warn him…"

"YOU COULD HAVE BLOODY WELL TRIED HARDER!"

"It was coming back anyway, John!" snapped Mycroft, for once allowing a few of his own habitually pent-up emotions to leak through in his voice. "What do you suppose the nightmares referenced, monsters under the bed?"

"Addiction, murder, childhood trauma," John listed, but Professor Dumbledore interrupted with a frown and a question evident in his tone. "Nightmares?"

"Recurring dreams," said Mycroft. "His suppressed memories, I have no doubt. He's had them, off and on, for years, but the last month—"

 _"Years?"_ demanded John.

"Yes, John," said Mycroft impatiently. "Years. But as I said, they have increased in frequency as of late…much as my brother denies it, I suspect they have recurred nightly in the course of the last month. The memories would almost certainly have surfaced soon even had we not been called here."

"Why _are_ we here?" asked John, distracted. "You've let him be for fifteen years, so why now, if this isn't about the dreams?"

In answer, Dumbledore handed him a much-worn newspaper that was lying closed on the desk. John saw that it was dated several months before. Unfolding it, he jumped as the large black-and-white photograph taking up most of the front page _moved_ ; it was a vaguely familiar mug shot of a man with a pale face, hollow cheeks, and haunted eyes; his dark, curling hair falling to his shoulders. The man was shaking a numbered wooden sign and evidently screaming at the camera; he looked quite deranged.

There was something about the man's face. John looked again, and gasped, voice cracking. "That's…"

"Sherlock's biological brother," said Dumbledore gently, drawing John's attention to the bold headline. _SIRIUS BLACK ESCAPES FROM AZKABAN!_

"So he's the one you mentioned," stuttered John, with a nod at Mycroft. "The one who's been on the news, the one who was sent to prison without a trial. So he's broken out and is on the run? That's why you've called in Sherlock, to find him?"

"I suppose he does have the qualifications," said Mycroft dryly. John valiantly resisted the urge to chuck something at him.

"Yeah, it's not actually that different from his usual cases," he muttered. The instant he dropped his gaze it was drawn back to the man in the photograph, magnetic in his silent scream and his resemblance to Sherlock. He had evidently once been handsome, with franker good looks than his brother's aristocratic features. But even raging in the black and white photograph Black's face was drawn with despair, the eyes dulled with the same heavy, haunted look John had so briefly glimpsed in Sherlock's. He shuddered.

"What is that prison…Azkaban…what's it like?" he asked in a hushed voice.

"Barbaric." Dumbledore's tone was uncharacteristically harsh, and John jerked his head up, startled. "The prison itself is nothing more than a fortified stone building on an island far at sea. Typical enough. But the guards are the very worst of Dark creatures, soulless beings called dementors. They swarm the place, feeding off the hopelessness and despair of the prisoners. Most inmates go mad within weeks. None retain the presence of mind necessary to formulate any plan of escape. Until now."

John's horror showed clearly on his face, and Dumbledore softened his tone.

"I have long fought the Ministry's alliance with such creatures," he said. "But don't feel too sorry for him, John, Sherlock's brother was imprisoned for murdering thirteen people with a single curse. Among…other crimes."

"Blimey…" John exhaled slowly. Sherlock's _brother._ Murdered thirteen people. Melodrama must run in the family.

"And now…"

"And now he has broken out of Azkaban, a feat widely believed impossible, and appears to be targeting a student at this school. Harry Potter was the cause of the Dark Lord's unexpected downfall, you see, and all signs indicate that Black, his most powerful follower, is out for revenge. In spite of the most rigid security measures, he was spotted three days ago within this very castle, putting all of our students and staff in very grave danger."

" _Inside_ a castle full of _children?"_

"The situation is desperate, and if Sherlock—"

"Hang on." John looked from one to the other, his eyes widening. "You're actually serious about this, aren't you?"

"John—"

 _"Listen here,"_ John hissed. "He's—" John shot a look at his friend's still profile, outlined in the flickering flames. "He's been gone from _your_ world fifteen years, he doesn't know any more about all this than I do! Now you're telling me my best friend was tortured by some madman, lost all his memories, doesn't even know his own brother, and you're dragging him back into this lunacy to solve it for you? You lot have _magic!_ Can't you sort it yourselves? Can't you do… anything?"

Albus held his tongue and listened to the rant, his respect growing with every word. He found himself reevaluating the young man, previously dismissed as 'Regulus' companion'. _The arrogance of age, magic and intellect, catching up with me despite my professions to the contrary._

Only after many years had Albus realized where the real imbalance in wizard-Muggle relations lay. It was the same as that between old age and youth, between the educated and the underprivileged. Not so much _power_ as _knowledge_.

With Mycroft, the similarities in their intellects and positions made it natural to converse and debate as equals. They had the same understanding of what was at stake, and Mycroft held a deeper understanding of the workings of magic than most wizards did. Albus was all too aware that interactions with other Muggles involved an element of deception, when they were not outright manipulations. An unfortunate and well-justified expedient of the Statute of Secrecy. Being a wizard placed one in a position of power that was, in some ways, no different than the mantle of government leadership he had dodged so many times. In other rare, privileged instances, it was like being a teacher; guiding a student to learn and build upon basics when there was too much information for him to cope with on his own.

This was one of those times. John Watson was a student, not a detail. And it was a poor professor who could not learn from his students.

Dumbledore shot a glance at the Sorting Hat poised on the shelf above and wondered what it would make of the small, very ordinary-looking man sitting across from him.

Collected. Loyal to a fault. Compassionate. Regulus had not been easy to get along with in his youth, and from what Albus had seen, was even less so now. Yet Watson had called him his 'best friend'. The revelation of a best friend's magical abilities could not be easy to take; Albus had seen instances in which friends and even lovers were pushed away for less. Then there was the not-inconsequential issue of Regulus' own probable guilt. And yet John…John had not doubted him at all. John's ire, in fact, was directed toward Mycroft and toward Albus himself for bringing him back. Bringing him into danger.

What had Mycroft's brief description been? 'Army doctor'? A position of honor, or rather, two.

Brave, then. A soldier. Protective, despite the fact that he himself had been thrown into a world with which he was entirely unfamiliar and which must be in every way overwhelming. Compassionate, concerned, and apparently entirely unconcerned about himself.

Yes, Albus had a good idea of what the Sorting Hat would say if it was placed on this man's head, and it made his affinity with Regulus Black all the more remarkable. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were what wizard and Muggle could be, without all the labels.

 _Regulus is a better man than I am,_ Albus mused, _if he saw all of that from the start._

Albus sat, digesting John's words for long moments after they had ceased. The room had fallen silent, apart from the crackling of the flames and the oddly harmonious patter of the rain that renewed its attack on the windowpanes in the rising wind. The two struck a strange sort of balance. Suddenly Dumbledore realized what he needed to say.

"John," he started, ignoring the unspoken warning in the shift of Mycroft's shoulders. "If I can make you understand why we need him, will you help?"

John leaned back and folded his arms. "Why do you need me?" after a moment. "I'm not like you. I'm not even like _him_ ," indicating Mycroft with a tilt of his head.

"Thank Merlin for that," said Albus dryly. "I hardly think we need another manipulative intellectual in the room." He ignored Mycroft's raised eyebrow. "In any case, the point is not what _we_ need. I do not take lightly your rapid and unapologetic introduction to the magical world, Dr. Watson, but I think we can agree that Reg—Sherlock is in even more turmoil than you are."

"Right," stated John, the flatness of his tone conveying the unspoken "and whose fault is that?"

Albus sighed, pressing fingertips to his forehead.

"The thing you must understand about magic, John, is that it is a double-edged blade. Now, given Mycroft's description of Regulus' work, I know that you have both come across your fair share of near-impossible situations. I think you have probably found that the secret behind the strangest cases generally lies in either an illusion or an innovation."

John thought for a moment, then nodded. "Right."

"So it is with magic. However, what you _must_ understand is that magic is a force of its own—a form of energy that can be manipulated at its fundamental level by anyone born with the instinct, and more effectively by those possessing the most basic of tools and a knowledge of its principles."

He paused, to see if John was following. The doctor nodded jerkily.

"In other words, magical innovation is not constrained by lack of resources, the way your own ingenious technology often is. Almost every witch or wizard has adapted a charm or two to his or her own personal use, almost without conscious thought. When the magically capable put time and energy into creating new spells, new possibilities, the results can be…" Albus paused again. "Rewarding.

"And dangerous. The point I am trying to make is that our records of magic, and in particular of Dark magic, are incomplete. The Ministry of Magic, and more recently the teachers of this school, have expended every effort—and I do mean every method known to us—to track down and capture Sirius Black. We have likewise explored every method we know by which he may have fought past the castle's protections and gained entry. Or given the illusion of doing so. But that is the point, John—we have explored only those pathways we have thought of—those we _know._ It's easy to say that this feat, like breaking out of Azkaban, was an impossible one. That is, of course, nonsense to anyone who understands magic at all. Black's method of concealment may be known to wizardkind, or not. Perhaps it was invented long ago, recorded by some ancient witch or wizard but never made known. Perhaps the secret was passed along by Lord Voldemort to his closest follower. Perhaps it was conceived of only in the depths of Black's strange, twisted mind. And that is why we need Sherlock."

At these last words, John's shoulders, which had begun to relax beneath the sound of pattering rain, drew taut again.

"Are you saying," John began, and stopped. The buzzing had begun again, at the back of his skull, but this time it only told him what he already knew: that he was so angry he could hardly get the words out. "Are you saying Sherlock thinks like _him?_ That madman? Just because they're brothers?"

"I am saying that somewhere in the depths of his memory, Sherlock—or rather Regulus Black— _knows_ Sirius. He may have some inkling of where he draws this strange power from. It is no secret that the Blacks are a family acquainted with Dark magic, John—or I should say _were_ , because Sirius and Regulus are all that is left of the direct line. They likely grew up learning Dark spells at their father's knee. If that is the case—and I am sorry to say I hope it was—then Regulus may know how his brother is evading capture."

Dumbledore raised a hand as John opened his mouth again. "We have also to consider that Sherlock was a Dark wizard himself, John. I know you hope in his innocence, as do I, but again it opens a possibility: that Voldemort may have passed on a secret that only the two brothers or Voldemort's most loyal followers were privy to. I also think we should not discount the possibility that Sherlock will remember something about Sirius himself, his personality, his past, that may give us some clue.

"So perhaps now you see why…if Reg—if Sherlock knows anything, anything at all, that may help us to recapture Black—"

John was silent a long time. In the interval, the rain could be heard more audibly beating against the glass. Albus imagined it streaming down in silvery sheets from the roofs of the highest towers.

"Yeah, not sure he'll be content with an advisory role," John said finally, with another glance at his friend by the fireplace. Dumbledore's eyes twinkled.

"If Sherlock can prove his own trustworthiness…then perhaps this is a case for a consulting detective."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: I'm going to be gone for a few days, so I'm posting three chapters at once. Spend wisely.**

 **Just be warned that posting might slow down after that because I have more writing to do...and also life may put fanfic on the backburner. So I'm gonna need a whole _herd_ of reviews when I get back...**

* * *

Sherlock sat with his back to the others, letting their conversation roll over him as he stared into the flames. Mycroft had informed him, in very few words, of the situation with Sirius Black…his alleged brother, Sirius…the name should have _meant_ something, and perhaps it did, because phantom memories pricked ever more insistently at Sherlock's mind, sending his thoughts whirring in a thousand directions…

It was a _case_ , he needed _details,_ but if he heard them in this state— _practically a Muggle_ , whispered something in his mind—they would mean nothing.

So Sherlock closed his eyes and searched his mind for the doors he had forgotten existed, the horrors that had crept from his dreams and now stalked him in daylight…

As the afternoon drew on, the wind whipped harder and harder around the castle. John stared through the rain lashing the paneled windows, expecting to feel the chill seep through the ancient panes at any moment, but nothing of the sort occurred. Clearly, magic had its advantages.

Slightly dazed with latent shock, lack of sleep and general incomprehension of Dumbledore and Mycroft's conversation, John wandered back to the fireplace, pulling his chair nearer so he could sit and watch light from the flickering flames play over his friend's still form. He was half-listening to the drone of conversation behind him, fighting the slow drooping of his head, when a sharp noise jerked him back upright. Outside, someone was rapping firmly on the oaken door.

"Enter," Dumbledore called, breaking off the conversation midsentence. He expressed no surprise when an elderly grey-haired woman dressed in long black robes and a severely pointed hat swept into the room.

"Mycroft, John, Minerva McGonagall, Hogwarts deputy headmistress," he introduced. "Minerva, Mr. Mycroft Holmes and Dr. John Watson. These men have been kind enough to join in our efforts to track down Sirius Black…"

"I came to inform you, headmaster, that the final search of the castle is concluded," said Minerva McGonagall crisply, with a nod and a curious glance at John and Mycroft. "Nothing more has been found."

Dumbledore bowed his head.

"I expected as much," he replied. "Our newest lead comes from without the castle, Minerva, and I have not yet acquainted you with him…but I suspect no introduction will be necessary."

Minerva followed his gesture toward the second figure beside the fire, and the color drained rapidly from her face. It was exactly as though she were seeing a ghost. John watched her trembling lips struggle to form the now-familiar name.

"Regulus…Regulus Black! But he's…" she glanced wildly from Dumbledore back to Sherlock, who was still quite unconscious of anything around him, chin resting lightly on his steepled fingers as he gazed into the flames.

"Not dead, apparently," said Dumbledore with a small smile. "Although we are yet unsure whether the same can be said for his memories. Have a seat, Minerva."

"Albus," she gasped. "How did this…how did he come to be here? Where has he been? We all thought he had died many years ago…You-Know-Who…"

"He has been under my protection during those years," came the even tones of the portly man seated beside the desk. "To cut a long story extremely short, he appeared in Muggle London one day, with every appearance of having abandoned the Death Eater cause and suffered for it, and," he shared a glance with Dumbledore, "having undergone extensive memory loss."

Minerva dropped at last into the chair Dumbledore conjured for her.

"Regulus, why don't you speak?"

John dragged his own chair over to rejoin the conversation.

"He won't respond for a while. He's in his…" John sighed. "His 'mind palace', he calls it. Some sort of mad memory technique, like a mental map. He's trying to remember…all of this." He waved his hand vaguely, indicating the vaulted ceiling and moving portraits. "For such an observant bloke, Sherlock—I mean Regulus—has a remarkable gift for tuning out everything going on around him." He offered a half smile. "Only when it's convenient, of course."

"Of course," said Minerva faintly. She peered more closely at the small, innocuous-looking man across from her. _Doctor_ , Dumbledore had said. A _Muggle_ then, on terms of friendship with a Death Eater? Was it possible?

Minerva found herself staring again at the figure beside the fire. Regulus' sojourn at Hogwarts had been nothing spectacular, so far as she could recall, but he held a place in her memory anyway. Perhaps simply by association—she had, after all, spent seven long years chasing his brother out of every form of mischief imaginable. Dear Merlin, Sirius Black was his _brother_. Was Dumbledore right to believe that Regulus could somehow assist in the search? Would he be willing? Was it possible, when he had not even memory to guide him?

She was surprised at the steadiness of her voice when she spoke. How quickly the gaunt, half-remembered face had shifted from impossibility to fact, albeit still an unknown variable.

"So Regulus has been isolated from our world for…how long?" she inquired, struggling to recall at what point, in an era of deaths and disappearances, one more wayward student had gone missing.

"Fifteen years," Dumbledore replied. "He has lived as a Muggle during that time period, under the name Sherlock Holmes."

Regulus Black, living as a Muggle. It was hard to imagine. Minerva thought she could recall, now, the flashes of brilliance she had noted in his schoolwork over the years…contempt, even, at the ease of the Transfigurations she assigned. She had suspected him of greater skill than he evidenced (so unlike his brother, showing off and conjuring cockroaches beneath her feet at every opportunity) but always something had distracted her from observing her quietest student more closely.

More than quiet. Withdrawn. Even among his Slytherin housemates. She hadn't been at all surprised, she remembered, to hear he had fallen in with You-Know-Who. No one had.

Minerva laughed shakily, returning to the conversation at hand. "Regulus Black living as a Muggle…how did he stand it?"

"It's not that unbearable," the small blonde man interrupted, looking mildly irritated. His stormy expression cleared as he cracked a smile. "Life with Sherlock is, in fact…rarely boring."

A sharp cry from the fireside punctuated this statement as Sherlock roused for the first time in hours. He rose from his seat without acknowledging anyone around him, and ran his hands agitatedly through his curls as he paced.

"It's no good," he hissed in a voice of pure frustration. "I remember…I don't know _what_ I remember, there's too much in the way…"

"Would a more in-depth explanation help?" Dumbledore offered mildly. Sherlock batted this suggestion away.

"No. Yes. Maybe. It doesn't—it just entangles everything, until I don't know what I _remember_ apart from what you've told me." He gazed around helplessly. "Sirius…I think I remember. I think I know his face. And then that picture swims into my mind, obliterating everything else…" Sherlock seized the unfolded newspaper from the desk and held it at arm's length. Then he looked at Mycroft, and the elder Holmes could almost see the gears spinning in his brain, helplessly, trying to reconcile two lives, two brothers as different as night and day.

"My wand. My wand might help. I can _feel_ it in this place, in this room, but I need to do magic again. Breathe it in. Feel the rush of it through my veins…"

"You know perfectly well that is not an option, Sherlock." Mycroft's voice was granite. Sherlock's lip twitched, irritably; Dumbledore stirred slightly but made no objection.

Minerva watched in slight alarm as Regulus glared at the two of them, then spun on his heel. If he had registered her appearance, he made no sign of it.

"Fine. I can do without."

"Sherlock…" John was having a vivid flashback of powdered plaster rising from a yellow smiley face on the wall, complete with the smell of gunpowder and several loud bangs.

"I need to…connect with it somehow, John," snapped Sherlock. "Remember…remember Baskerville? The hound that I saw, but couldn't believe in, and still…"

It was a twisted mirror image of that scene. John remembered the pallor on his friend's face, the sweat standing out on his forehead, the tremors running violently through the ordinarily invulnerable, almost robotic frame. Sherlock, pacing in the fire's dying glow, was just as agitated now as he had been then, but this time for an even stranger reason.

"A hound." Sherlock stopped short for a moment, and then resumed his pacing with a more urgent step. "No, that's not right…it's Baskerville all over again, John, only this time I can know the truth, and consciously believe, and still not _connect_ to anything…"

John found himself standing, resting a grounding hand on Sherlock's shoulder without quite knowing how he got there.

"That time," he said slowly, "…it was a matter of proving _how_ you could see something that wasn't there. To break the hold it had. The fear."

"Yes," Sherlock hissed. "Yes, that's what I said. This is the opposite. Worse. Explanations I can comprehend, appreciate, but I can't reconcile _memories_ with something my subconscious won't accept as real…"

"Do some magic," John said suddenly. It was demanding, ludicrous even, but…

Sherlock blinked and looked down at him. "Just like that?" he asked drily.

"Why not?"

"I believe a magic wand is generally considered a prerequisite…"

"Rubbish," said John, more boldly than he felt. "If that's all it took, there wouldn't be people like me around, would there? _You're_ the magic one. It's part of _you._ If I can believe it, you had bloody well better or I am going to feel really stupid."

Sherlock stopped pacing and stared hard at John.

"All right…John," he said after a moment. "We'll go with your hypothesis."

Hypothesis. John felt lighter, suddenly, as he fought down a mad urge to laugh. Everything about this was completely mental.

"Okay." His mind whirled. "Scientific method. What's the procedure?"

"Perhaps I should pull a rabbit out of a hat," said Sherlock drily. "Or have you another suggestion?"

John snorted and wheeled, staring around the office for inspiration. The three people crowded around the desk were fixated on him, and on Sherlock, with something approaching…wonder? Unease? Amusement? John couldn't tell. He turned his back on them, and his eyes fell on the still-smoldering remains of the log in the fireplace.

Sherlock watched John step forward cautiously (no doubt recalling their journey via Floo powder) and kick ash over the crumbling pieces of wood, stamping it down until the flames were well and truly choked. Then he stepped back.

"There you go," John nodded toward the fireplace. "Set it alight."

Sherlock stared at the blackened pile of kindling. Was it possible? Was it really possible?

 _Yes,_ logic informed him. Portraits were moving. Mycroft had transported them via flame. There were indications, marks both obvious and seemingly inconsequential strewn throughout this office, confirming it. Magic _was_ real. There was simply no other explanation; although, objectively speaking, with one impossibility confirmed as truth there seemed no reason to discount others…

No. That was stupid. For once John was right. Back to the basics: the universe was ordered. Human knowledge was incomplete; so-called physical laws altered with the progression of scientific observation, but the universe itself made sense. Magic was merely another piece to the puzzle. And John was right too that it was _part_ of him. Written in his DNA. Not a separate entity; he didn't have the luxury of thinking like that. A wand was a mere instrument, helpful but unnecessary; the magic was _his_ , he could summon it, channel it, hold it in his hand. He'd done it before. The neuron pathways were there. There was no reason he couldn't do it now.

The whole thing was hopelessly flawed, insane. Watson's Third Law of Monumental Stupidity. A smile tugged at the corner of Sherlock's mouth.

Shutting his eyes, falling back on instinct, he gathered himself and _reached…_

…and a moment later something… _something_ …was rushing like a noiseless roar through the neuron pathways of his brain, echoing in his ears, tingling in his fingertips…

John, standing behind Sherlock, didn't see his expression change.

"Set it alight," he repeated with a touch of belligerence, because maybe this was madness, but it was madness they were going through with. And somehow, bizarrely, John believed in it, in Sherlock—he must have, because he was to spend the next six months denying that a shred of apprehension had crept into his tone.

Okay.


	10. Chapter 10

"That was…memorable," said Mycroft drily, several minutes later, after Dumbledore, with Minerva's help, had extinguished the smoldering curtains.

He made no mention of the most fascinating part of the little drama. Mycroft had kept closer tabs on Sherlock's life than he would ever be willing to admit; had watched him redeem his mind from drowning emptiness and invent a new career by sheer effort of focused brilliance, had witnessed him flounder and excel, by turns, still struggling occasionally in the grip of whatever torment had had such profound effect on his mind. And Mycroft had watched John Watson limp into his brother's life and somehow provide what he himself could not; willing, from the beginning, to be a companion, to risk his life and even to kill for Sherlock Holmes.

But he had never seen them work together this way. Never really understood how the simple, average mind could balance and complete the brilliant, wide-ranging one, how the straightforward suggestions steadied and enhanced the incredible deductive leaps; in short, how John's mind (capable of all the intrigue of a goldfish) could be just as valuable as his extraordinary heart.

He understood now. And the fact that John knew nothing about magic made it all the more astonishing. The man had such complete faith in Sherlock, and Sherlock had such _trust_ in him…

Sherlock, trusting. That in itself was extraordinary.

* * *

Sherlock resumed his seat by the flames as soon as they contracted to a more manageable size. His mind felt oddly exhausted, but exhilarated. The burning _need_ to experience magic again had been slightly illogical, bordering on sentimental, perhaps, and yet now it felt as though something had clicked, and the built-up strain in his head was draining away as though from a lanced wound. Magic was no longer an amorphous entity, to be believed in (believed in!) but not approached. It was _real_ , it was _part_ of him; it had been central to the life that had by no means burst the floodgates, but was finally trickling back into his mind.

And so he sat the whole night through. Remembering.

* * *

John awoke the next morning in the softest cot he had ever slept in. Dumbledore himself had conjured it the night before, before retiring to his own quarters for the night. John had prodded it cautiously before climbing in and falling asleep within minutes. The day had been an oddly exhausting one.

It had been decided that they remain within the castle for the time being. Mycroft had suggested a return to Baker Street via the convenience of near-instant travel, but Sherlock brushed this idea aside. "I need to be here," he had said, simply. John himself hadn't been too keen on the idea of climbing into the grate again, and had gratefully accepted Dumbledore's offer of a place to sleep. It had been deemed unwise for the two men to venture yet outside the office, particularly given Sherlock's unfortunate resemblance to his brother…and John remembered, with a plunging sensation in his stomach, that his best friend may have his own crimes to answer for. Whenever this thought overtook him, John invariably found himself wishing, for a split second, that Sherlock's memories would not return, that things could go back to the way they were: days spent in companionable silence and nights investigating crime scenes , with no dark, twisted betrayals haunting the past.

For John Watson, the past had always held much more to fear than the future.

Sherlock was still glued to his armchair beside the revived fire. Without turning, he spoke six words that morning. A phrase John would remember later as the one that finally turned his world shatteringly, unequivocally upside down.

"Tell Mycroft I need the memories."

* * *

They had another private dinner that evening with Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, the deputy headmistress. She still stared at Sherlock as though he were a ghost. Mycroft had returned late in the morning with a tiny crystal bottle full of a strange, drifting silvery substance, his arrival putting an end to Sherlock's uninterrupted night vigil. Sherlock himself looked drained, exhaustion tracing his features in a way that John knew was not due to his sleepless night so much as to the contents of the little bottle and whatever it was they had unlocked within his brain.

Sherlock had not spoken a word since emptying the vial into a stone basin and disappearing into the memories. John shivered, recalling Mycroft's description— _an amalgam of nightmares_ —but Sherlock had neither vanished literally nor shown any sign of terror; merely trailed a hand in the basin and stood with a curiously blank expression on his face that Dumbledore assured John was the usual result of venturing into the strange, milky substance he called 'Pensieve'. Afterward, Sherlock had withdrawn his hand from the swirling mass and himself from any attempts at conversation and collapsed onto John's empty bunk, sleeping the afternoon away. A natural sleep, John noted with relief, more restful than his flatmate had experienced in the past month. John could almost see the tension bleeding out of his face.

So if his friend's weariness still showed at dinner, John was optimistic enough to believe that the worst was behind them. That Sherlock slowly regained animation throughout the meal seemed confirmation of this; he attacked the delicious food (another of the apparent perks of a magical school) with uncharacteristic voracity, and John wondered whether even Sherlock Holmes was not immune to nostalgia.

Afterward, John was too fascinated with observing the creature Dumbledore summoned to serve tea (it vaguely reminded him of a smaller, more wrinkled version of Mrs. Hudson) to notice Sherlock shudder and grimace slightly at the first sip.

"Veritaserum?" he inquired, raising an eyebrow at Dumbledore. The headmaster nodded apologetically.

Sherlock sighed and drained the cup, replacing it on the saucer. "Prepared by Severus, I suppose, he always was a bit heavy-handed with it…"

"You wished me to join you, headmaster?"

John glanced up, startled, as the door slammed shut behind a black-haired, sallow-faced man. His scowl became more pronounced as he took the empty chair across from Sherlock, who merely smiled.

"You brought that observation upon yourself, Severus. Quite literally. John thinks I have no filter at the best of times, but he is about to learn he is wrong. If any of you have secrets that you wish to keep, I suggest you depart now."

"Veritaserum…" John looked from Sherlock to Severus and back again. "What's that?"

"Truth serum, John. I recommend you take the earliest opportunity to study up on your Latin. Oh, sit down," Sherlock added in response to John's immediate indignation. "It's no more than I expected. An innocent man does not get one of these," he raised his left arm, "without very good reason."

"Let us begin," Dumbledore interjected. "Are you Regulus Arcturus Black?"

Sherlock let out a small breath. "Yes."

"And are you Sherlock Holmes?"

"I am."

"Are you innocent?" inquired Dumbledore calmly.

"Define your criteria."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake—" Minerva began, but Mycroft interrupted.

"To a sociopath's mind, societal laws and conventions are arbitrary. And at times like these, little brother, you _do_ make one wonder."

"One can display sociopathic tendencies without fitting the archetype."

Mycroft was amused. "It sounds as though you've done your research."

"Of course I have, almost directly after escaping your 'rehabilitation' charade all those years ago. As it turns out, Muggles are even more interested than wizards are in finding out what's wrong with me. People don't throw labels around if you provide your own."

The room fell silent; Sherlock scowled.

"Whose idea was it for Mycroft to be here?" he growled. "Or am I on trial in two worlds at once?"

Dumbledore quickly resumed. "Have you committed any serious crime against wizard or Muggle society?"

"Certainly."

 _"No!"_ blurted John. "Sherlock—don't—"

Sherlock shot him a pitying glance, and John realized he had grabbed his friend's arm. He closed his eyes, releasing a short, shaky breath. He had wanted answers, hadn't he? He just hadn't wanted to hear this.

"I couldn't lie right now, even if I wanted to, John," Sherlock murmured almost contritely. "And I _have_ done what he said…at least," he raised his voice, turning back to Dumbledore. "I suppose that union the Death Eaters in itself constitutes such a crime?"

Dumbledore's face was impassive. "If voluntarily, yes."

"Sorry…what are Death Eaters, again?"

"Terrorists, John. Dark wizards under the leadership of Lord Voldemort, infamous for a radical belief in the superiority of Wizardkind. Fond of torturing and killing Muggles and Muggleborn wizards. He was one—" pointing at Snape, whose face immediately darkened. "And I was one, though our reasons for joining differed—"

"Yes, to a great degree," interrupted Severus in a silky hiss. "You were a brainwashed pureblood child, and I was a brainwashed halfblood one. You may be interested to learn that your dear brother has since gone the same way—"

John was horrified, and in no doubt that it showed on his face.

"Sirius never sat still long enough for anyone to pound pureblood maxims into his head," returned Sherlock calmly. "He is no more a Death Eater than they are," with a nod at Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore.

This assertion was a wholly unexpected one to the three wizards; Snape's expression instantly turned to stone, and Minerva jerked her head sharply. Dumbledore merely placed his hands together and regarded Sherlock levelly over the tips of his fingers.

"You seem quite assured of…"

Sherlock straightened in his chair, and John suppressed a sigh.

"Let me assure _you_ of something, Severus." Sherlock turned piercing eyes on the elderly witch beside him, with steely grey hair pulled back in a bun. "You're not the only one here to have grown up treated like the filth on the bottom of one's shoes, or to have lost the love of your life for that matter. I'd keep that in mind if I were—wait."

If McGonagall was quivering with fury, it was nothing to the look on Snape's face, an expression that John could only describe as 'murderous rage'. He had seen it applied to Sherlock many times, but never with this intensity; nothing less than Dumbledore's paralyzing grip on Severus' wand arm kept him seated and the detective alive. The stares boring into him from all sides, however, did nothing to curb Sherlock's flood of words.

"Unexpected deduction… _You_ lost someone, Severus? That shouldn't surprise me. What else would have prompted you to come back to the light, obsessed as you were; you never deviated from the Dark Lord's command, except…of course. Was it _love_? By far the most vicious motivator known to man, though fortunately for you, not to Lord Voldemort. And it's not difficult to guess who, is it? You have little enough in the way of family and friends." Sherlock paused, and John was astonished to hear the slightest hint of regret creeping into his voice. "Lily Evans was a Muggleborn, was she not? I'm sorry she's dead, she was much less an idiot than the rest of my brother's friends…"

"Severus." Dumbledore's voice was warning mingled with threat. Whatever wordless spell he'd been using to keep the Potions master in his chair had failed, and Snape was on his feet, grasping his wand in a white-knuckled grip. John felt himself slipping into the deep, dangerous calm that enveloped him whenever his friend was under threat. Sherlock saw the peril and felt John stiffen at his side, but was powerless to stop himself.

"Your fury at my mention of her suggests guilt. Somehow, you feel responsible for her death…You despised James Potter and yet you protect his son, it must be for Lily's sake, was she the mother? Of course, those two were always sniping at each other, I suppose it was inevitable they got married…"

Dumbledore was on his feet now too, wand in his hand and pointing, not at Sherlock, but at the enraged Potions master.

" _Severus, control yourself_."

Severus met his eyes, held them for a long, heart-pounding second, and then with a grimacing jerk thrust his wand back into his robes and swept out of the room, hand twitching involuntarily toward his pocket as he passed Sherlock. John leapt to his feet, but the man was already gone, the thick door's resounding slam echoing off the curved walls of the office.

Minerva gripped the sides of her armchair and fought for control of her voice.

"Are you certain that Regulus has been cut off from our world, Albus? He seems quite well informed to me!"

"He is under the influence of Veritaserum, Professor, ask him yourself."

John jumped. He had quite forgotten Mycroft was there, leaning against the mantle and applying a razor focus to the scene. His vigilance had not dissipated when Snape fled, though one hand twisted slowly, rhythmically, unconsciously pivoting the handle of his umbrella until its point dug into the carpet. For the briefest moment he caught Sherlock's eye, and something seemed to pass between them.

"I have been," answered Sherlock to Minerva's questioning stare. "And, as you know, deprived of my memories," with a pointed glare at Mycroft. "Those memories are mostly returned, but what I told Severus was deduction based off observation. The _point_ is that if I can read a man's personal history from his mere appearance, you may be certain that fourteen years in Sirius Black's company were more than enough to acquaint me with his character."

"There was no need…"

"CAN'T YOU SEE I CAN'T STOP!" bellowed Sherlock. "For Merlin's sake ask me something _relevant_ , or this poison will have me spilling your secrets for the next hour. Which would, I think, be unbearably dull for all concerned."

"Not to mention embarrassing," muttered John. Minerva looked affronted.

"Explain your involvement with the Death Eaters, please," said Dumbledore. The headmaster had sat in silence for some time, making no effort to involve himself in the altercation.

Sherlock took a breath. And it unfolded.

* * *

 **A/N: Next chapter's my faaaavorite...**


	11. Chapter 11

_Childhood. 'Dull' is one term for it. 'Powerless' another._

 _Most people would not call these synonyms, but then, most people's definitions are so narrow._

 _Sirius fought from the start. That was his mistake. I didn't. That was mine._

 _It's so easy to believe in your own superiority, particularly when it's the truth. The half-formed logic of a child discerns effect much more easily than cause. The latter is left to the parents._

 _I believe I was five before I first began to realize their assumptions of pureblood dominance were based on nothing more than self-delusion. I was studying the permanent protective spells in the entrance hall when Millicent Bagnold came to call on my parents for Ministry business. She was elegant, haughty, born of a respectable pureblood family. Condescendingly tolerant of an inquisitive child. Among other things, I asked why her wand, at least twenty years old but polished to the point of obsession, held none of the accumulated particulate energy that accompanies tools used for serious magic. I pulled mine from my robes—we never wore Muggle clothing—and compared them._

 _Sirius was the only other person in the hall, and he merely laughed and ran out._

 _Until then, having no data to the contrary, I had blindly assumed that all purebloods shared the intellectual and magical prowess of my parents. Muggle neighbors I had met, once or twice: amusing in their stupidity, striding self-importantly down the street, tiresomely over-friendly and soon rebuffed. Never looking up at the extraordinary world stretched all around, hardly seeing beyond their own noses. Ordinary wizards I had met when my father took me with him to the Ministry: half-bloods and even Muggle-borns, as I heard with disgusted fascination. It took only a glance to confirm their incompetence._

 _Millicent Bagnold was different. She was one of us, or my parents would not have welcomed her into our home. I could trace our relation on the drawing room tapestry. She swept across our threshold with the dignity becoming her bloodline. And out again five minutes later, having lost both that dignity and my respect. That was how long it took a five-year-old child to realize she was utterly incompetent in any form of magical improvisation._

 _A month later, she was appointed Minister of Magic._

 _It was a vague source of confusion for many years, the beginning of the thought that wormed into my skull and changed me. Doubts, as I learned, do not merely develop; they multiply._

 _I grew. I met others. Sirius and I were eventually permitted to remain in the dining room during dinner parties. Often I was called upon to demonstrate my dexterity with one charm or another. The trophy child even then._

 _Sirius only I didn't understand._

 _"Are the Malfoys our cousins?" I asked him once._

 _He laughed. "Everyone you've ever met is our cousin, little brother."_

 _"Why aren't they like Mother and Father, then?"_

 _"How so?"_

 _"They're stupid. Like the Muggles."_

 _He laughed again, harsh in his delight. "We're as stupid as any Muggles, in our own way."_

 _A few years later, Sirius was sorted into Gryffindor. Soon I was the only child joining in the dinner parties._

 _Hogwarts was the eventual confirmation of all my suspicions. But there was enough Black in me that I was Sorted into Slytherin without a second thought. Or perhaps the Sorting Hat caught a glimpse, in my innermost thoughts, of the beginnings of a plan then unknown even to me. Either way I belonged in the house of serpents._

 _Even then there were whispers of war on the air._

 _Lily Evans was two years my senior, a Mudblood, and a Gryffindor. There was no reason for us to meet._

 _I came across her one day in the dungeons, half an hour after classes had ended. An experiment I was working on involved certain ingredients that didn't find their way into a first-year student's supply list, so I intended to borrow some. I knew Slughorn would be in his office, sucking down mead and chocolates. To judge from the traces of mud in the hallway, the third years had finished their lesson half an hour before; I didn't expect to meet anyone else there. I halted in the doorway. She hadn't seen me. I spoke to her for no reason except that I was bored enough of my fellow Slytherins that I was willing to forsake the house of my fathers to meet someone new._

 _Even filth._

 _But Lily didn't seem to be filth. As I watched, she frowned over her cauldron before crushing a handful of thyme into it. The potion simmered a deep peacock blue at once._

 _"Unorthodox."_

 _She jumped._

 _"Effective though. Hey."_

 _"Hey." Her eyes traveled up my robes, noted the green trimming, and then moved on to my face. Recognition. "Are you Sirius's brother?"_

 _"I have the dubious honor."_

 _She laughed. And somehow I had a friend. Gryffindor, Muggle-born, and almost brilliant._

 _We weren't close. But she would talk to me. She was different from most people in that respect. Nor was I the only one. Lily befriended anyone. Her closest companion was another boy from my House, one who was already beginning to fall in with those who would call themselves Death Eaters._

 _Classes were tedious in their simplicity. The professors commonplace in their thought processes. My schoolmates petty in their rivalries. Nonetheless it was new; it was distraction. Going home felt like reentering a cage._

 _If I came home altered, I concealed the change from my parents. There was little use sacrificing their love when I couldn't transform their opinions. But a part of me preferred Lily's company to theirs._

 _Sirius had changed too. It was as though my Sorting cemented his own differences from the House of Black. From the moment I entered Hogwarts, I watched from afar as he grew more reckless, more careless, more determined to prove himself the 'black' sheep of the family. His rebellion was outright, brash, paraded. Mine would manifest as a long charade of proper pureblood pride. Marriage to my birthright. As was expected._

 _Mycroft will attest that this would not come easily to me. The slavery of my mind in childhood made acquiescence now all the more bitter, and I resented Sirius for his liberty to shock and revolt. But Lord Voldemort's rise was more than whispers now. There were disappearances, deaths, attacks on Muggleborns in the streets. My parents discussed these events with open approbation. Clever as they were, they refused to see the danger in a power that promoted blindness—blind hatred, blind love, blind obsession. My father, despite his genius for unerring calculations and precise magical manipulations, detected no flaw in political opinions that acknowledged no dissenting evidence. And my mother was, as always, infinitely passionate in her loves and her hatreds. Sirius and I were the proof of that._

 _Autumn arrived again, but my Housemates provided no relief. Reading people is pointless when you already know what you will find. I took to wandering the grounds, first on foot, then on a broomstick, for distraction and fresh air. When you live in the air, people take notice, particularly Quidditch captains. I was team Seeker before the year was out. Not my only distinction at Hogwarts, but the only one that was widely noted._

 _Noticing everything can only be a good trait in a Seeker, I had thought. I was wrong. Seekers live for the glint of gold and disregard all else. I could not make the crowd into one amorphous entity; they bombarded me as they always had with their patterns, their details, their individuality, and sometimes I could not block them out. At other times my quick eye served me well. Sirius, the consummate Gryffindor, was irresolute but not yet indifferent to my victories. But if I ever thought he cheered me aloud I would have fallen off my broomstick._

 _Almost as much as my fellow students, the Daily Prophet was a mine of information in what it said and did not say. Time was growing short, my revulsion settling on its true targets as the Dark Lord settled on his. I began to see my path marked out at last._

 _And so the next year I mingled more with my fellow Slytherins. Always in the background. My superior knowledge and spellwork had always spawned in me more disinterest than a tendency to show off in class. My deductions were another matter, but those who knew my parents' reputations forgave them. Still aloof, but accepted. Except at Quidditch games, I was wallpaper. And slowly I gravitated toward those who should have drawn me anyway. My cousins the Malfoys, our friends the Lestranges and Averys, and their lesser, though still useful, companions. By fourth year my destiny was assumed for me._

 _Sirius left home the next summer. He ran off to live with the Potters and their son James, one of the idiots I played Quidditch against. Mother's dislike of her eldest son by then bordered on hatred, but it was now that we began to fall apart at the seams. I, as ever, had to supply the deficit. After Sirius had gone I sat in the hall outside his bedroom door, peppering it with hexes, imagining how his features would stretch and writhe in pain if he were to open it and come out as in the old days, dragging his feet beneath the burden of his family name. The door blackened with scorch marks and I burned, hating Sirius for his freedom._

 _I found my own sort of freedom after sixth year. I left Hogwarts. War was no longer on the horizon. It was on every side. Formal education seemed irrelevant by that point. I was more magically skilled than the majority of my professors. My extensive knowledge of the Dark Arts, commenced as a child among the books in my father's study, was the envy of my now constant companions. I simply fulfilled expectations in becoming a Death Eater._

 _Mother cried with joy when she heard._

 _Lord Voldemort in person was different than I had expected. More charismatic, and yet colder. Too cold to inspire such devotion, you would think. But I knew the chill that drove away friends. His drew in followers. Power-hungry, obsessive, or simply sadistic. For a long time I remained in the background, concealed by my junior rank, fearing to let him see inside my mind. When finally he did, I was surprised to learn that I could look the Dark Lord in the eye and let selective memory confirm my lies. Occlumency in its most delicate form._

 _As I moved up within the Dark Lord's ranks, I demonstrated my devotion in ways terrible in their very routineness. I did not kill, but I did other things, things that I am not proud of, things that, I believe, few people of my convictions could have done. They haunted me, of course. They still do._

 _I have recollections which would destroy any of you—and which, under the circumstances, have played their part in my own ordeal—but with which I can cope. The Muggles call me a sociopath. This is not entirely accurate, but near enough to the truth. That was my salvation._

 _Coldness suited me in more ways than one. My fellow Death Eaters learned not to expect in me excitement or pleasure at the prospect of causing pain. Boredom, at other times my worst enemy, became my best friend._

 _If your question regarding all of this is 'why', then I will answer it: Because it was not the battle of a moment. Mere sabotage would be far from sufficient. The Dark Lord himself must fall, and I was one of the few—perhaps the only—poised to bring him down._

 _I had long suspected the Dark Lord of having made multiple Horcruxes—objects containing a portion of his soul—to ensure his immortality. His features were twisted, blurred; he was scarcely human in body as well as in mind. I saw his fear of death, his obsession with it, when no one else did. And wondered that I did not mirror it, living as I did on the knife's edge of mortality. But my life had never been my own._

 _Of his Horcruxes, Lord Voldemort spoke to no one. Not even his most loyal followers, among whom I was counted. I had no way of ascertaining their number, though I felt assured that they would be powerful magical objects. The Dark Lord is not one to keep his soul in an old shoe._

 _One day I heard he had presented Lucius with a small book for safekeeping. I was always welcome in Malfoy Manor. Left alone a few moments, I cast about for energy sources and soon discovered strong protective fields emanating from the drawing room floor. Thus satisfied with the book's location, and not willing to attempt its removal until I learnt of others, I made my excuses and left._

 _I went home. It was safe to do so, for as my involvement with the Death Eaters became known, my parents feared the Ministry's encroachment and placed increasing protections on the house. By the end they withdrew almost entirely from Wizarding society. And though they persisted in their pureblood sympathies, I think my deliberately brutal manner repulsed them. Yet they depended on me, their only son still so considered, the only one to show proper attention and respect. Mother truly loved me, and love tore her apart. Father, who dealt little in emotion, nevertheless appeared older, shrunken, more worn away each time I saw him. At length I ceased to visit at all. It was wearying as a façade, and even more so when it fell away._

 _In one respect I was a good son. I kept Lord Voldemort from our door, the only time he could have had reason to venture there._

 _The Dark Lord required an elf. I explained to our old house-elf, Kreacher, that it was an honor to serve. I told him to do as the Dark Lord required and then return home and report to me. I despised myself as I sold Kreacher to one cause and my own soul to another. But it was not an opportunity to be passed up._

 _Kreacher returned late that night, shivering, fretful, driven nearly out of his mind. I forced the account from him while nursing him back to as much health as could be regained. And so I heard the tale of the cave, the locket, the potion._

 _It was clear by that time that I could no longer put off my task. There was always the possibility that Kreacher's return would be remarked upon by Bellatrix or Narcissa. And any day I could be forced to become either a murderer or a martyr._

 _In all of this I never consulted with Albus Dumbledore or anyone else. I assumed he would have spies, of course, it would be madness not to attempt it. But I could not risk a meeting with him and did not wish to be put in contact with anyone else; it would increase our mutual danger exponentially._

 _I prepared a message that would be sent to Dumbledore at the time of my death, at the very moment my heart stopped beating. In it I detailed all my knowledge of the other Horcruxes, all the names of my fellow Death Eaters as I knew them, and their crimes, and all relevant information pertaining to the Dark Lord's plans. I gave orders to Kreacher to conduct me to the cave, to abandon me and depart with the Horcrux, to destroy it if he could, and if he could not, to turn it over to Dumbledore when approached._

 _The cave was in a cold and desolate place: a rocky seaside cliff in the north of England. We entered via a hidden archway that opened at the taste of blood. Inside lay a wide green lake, unnaturally still. In the center of the lake an island. A tiny boat raised by an invisible chain conveyed us to the island, which bore in its center a basin full of emerald liquid. This liquid, I soon ascertained, could not be Transfigured, Vanished, or otherwise altered. It had to be drunk._

 _And so I drank the potion that had driven Kreacher nearly to madness. It is impossible to say which was worse: the reliving of all the cruelest things that I had done and seen done to others, or the desperate thirst the potion caused. Kreacher replaced the locket in the empty basin, and I threw myself at the edge of the lake—the only source of water that did not evaporate on contact with air—and waited to join the army of the dead that would now protect only a worthless trinket._

 _My life was not to be thrown away without cause. In the first place I had no doubt that the Dark Lord had made a human's escape from the island an impossibility. Even if my escape were assured, my sanity was not. Kreacher still cringed and shivered when the aftereffects of the potion overtook him, and as it had been brewed against humans the effects upon myself would almost certainly be more severe and lasting. There would be no concealing from the Dark Lord what I had done; to set foot in his presence again would be as good as an offering of everything I had known and betrayed. Hiding would have been an option had my mental faculties been left to me, but the dangers of capture and interrogation were too great. If the Dark Lord were to discover my betrayal before Dumbledore had sought out the other Horcruxes, all would be lost._

 _That my disappearance would raise questions was certain, but I would not be there to answer them. The capture or death of a young and inexperienced Death Eater at the hands of the Ministry's Aurors was too commonplace to arouse great suspicion. Only when Voldemort returned to check the locket would he find the replacement with my note inside. I hoped it would not be for years, by which time at least the book and the locket would be destroyed. When the time came I wished him to know who had taken it, lest suspicion toward Dumbledore's possible spies among the Death Eaters be aroused. I also wanted one person, by then the only one who mattered, to know that Regulus Arcturus Black was not the part he had played all his life._

 _In all of this I had no way of foreseeing that the Dark Lord's downfall was at hand. I greeted Death, not so much with acceptance as with the assurance that there was no other way._

 _I made two errors of judgment. I overestimated Lord Voldemort and underestimated Kreacher and sentiment._

 _That Kreacher was able to Disapparate with me in tow still seems to me an appalling lack of forethought that I would not have believed possible of Voldemort. That the elf fought to interpret his orders this way was just as unforeseen. I am still at a loss as to how I survived._

 _Kreacher at first brought me to Grimmauld Place, but I had presence of mind enough to command him to take me elsewhere. We appeared on a relatively deserted London street near St. Mungo's, where Kreacher was forced by his orders to leave me. He must have hoped I would be taken inside by a kindhearted witch or wizard. If I had been, it would have been death in one way or another._

 _A Muggle with some slight knowledge of wizardry and far too much control over London's CCTV network was the one to find me. And there my memory fails me. By that time I was raving again under the torment of the potion._

* * *

 **A/N: I was going to hold off a few days before posting this but thought that would just be too cruel...**

 **Anyone want to share your Sherlock survival theories?**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Short chapter. Sorry. Life got crazy with family stuff going on.**

* * *

By the time Sherlock had finished, John was sure the temperature in the room had dropped several degrees in spite of the roaring flames. During the recital it felt as though something icy had curled into his chest and lodged there, choking off all the words he wanted to say. If only he could form a sound he could tell them to stop this, stop all of this, curb the flood of past that had been frustratingly indefinite and was now all too real. Send them back to Baker Street where they belonged, where John would endure the week-long lethargic silences as he always had, and where Sherlock would live in nightmare only when asleep.

"You can't be serious," he finally croaked, when the flow of words halted.

"No, I'm Regulus," said Sherlock.

John stared at him.

Sherlock cursed under his breath.

"I've gone over thirty years without making that joke," he growled. "Stupid potion."

The banter was enough to shake the other inhabitants of the room from their respective stupors of shock, horror, and relief.

"You kept your own counsel, Regulus," said Minerva shakily, drawing a breath.

"For good reason," said Dumbledore unexpectedly. "And yet I wish I had received your intelligence years before." He passed a weary hand over his face.

Sherlock exhaled. "The unexplained flaw in an otherwise foolproof plan."

"Yeah…don't talk about that," said John stiffly. Sherlock turned toward him, eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

"What?"

"Nothing," growled John.

"Well?" Sherlock looked challengingly at Dumbledore. "Are you satisfied?"

"For the time being," said Dumbledore carefully. And then he smiled. "Regulus, I—I am glad. And I wish to thank you…you gave up everything to render the world a great service."

"To attempt it, anyway."

"In any case, you achieved much. I am sure it will interest you to know that the book has been destroyed—reprehensible carelessness on the part of Lucius Malfoy—but I presume Kreacher still has the locket?"

"He was ordered not to bring it to you until after my death. I can summon him here at any time, but…"

"Not yet," Dumbledore cut him off. "Not yet. There is a possibility, however slight, that your brother could summon him and learn of your return…"

"I agree, but as I told you, Sirius is…" Sherlock cut himself off, hesitant. "Is he the only one to whom Kreacher might communicate my return?"

Sympathy and understanding were etched in the lines of Dumbledore's face. Sherlock clenched his jaw, letting his eyes flutter closed for the briefest moment.

"How long?"

"Your mother lived no more than a year following your disappearance," said Dumbledore quietly. "Brokenhearted, I think…your father lived long enough to see Sirius imprisoned, and then followed her."

John turned to his friend. Sherlock gave a quick nod but stared through Dumbledore, unseeing. When John placed a hand on his shoulder he seemed not to notice. A vein jumped in his neck, and his left hand had curled involuntarily around the scarf in his lap.

"I'm sorry, mate," said John quietly. The Blacks sounded far from the best parents in the world—John's hadn't been, either—but he knew the pain that was there all the same. Whatever else they had been, they were Sherlock's. To come back, after so long, only to find both mother and father gone…it wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

A softly musical cry split the air, a golden note that lasted for only a second. It felt like a wound, somehow, deep-cutting sorrow mingled with the painful half-hope of healing and peace. When it had reverberated into silence John found his heart felt lighter, clearer; he looked up blearily and focused on the great red-and-gold bird that had fluttered off its perch to sit on Dumbledore's shoulder. It bobbed its head, beady black eye staring solemnly back. John felt Sherlock relax infinitesimally beside him.


End file.
